What makes someone a YogaSlacker? Identifying ourselves as climbers, or yogis, or endurance athletes, or eco-activists just seems too limiting. We are dreamers, adventurers, lovers, friends, explorers. We strive to discover the deepest aspects of human potential within ourselves and to smile from each ad every cell in our bodies. Why would we limit ourselves to less?

The founders of Team YogaSlackers are Jason Magness and Sam Salwei. Jason and Sam are one of the developers of slackline yoga. An adventure racer and climbing gym owner, Jason is also an advanced level Ashtanga practitioner and a certified AcroYoga teacher. He describes himself as someone ho can’t make up his mind – yoga, climbing, traveling, adventure racing – he enjoys working and playing at a high level in all of them.

Sam comes from North Dakota and is the visionary behind Team Yogaslacker’s To Cross the Moon Expedition of snowkiting through the state of North Dakota using only the wind in the dead of February, as an environmental education project. Sam is also a yoga teacher, advanced AcroYoga practitioner, expert snowkiter, rock climber, and adventure racer.

Robert Finlay has been an ultimate adventurer for many decades now. He has spent almost 3 decades rock climbing and speed hiking. An avid mountain biker, Robert has been biking and kayaking for over 15 years. Putting all these outdoor pursuits together into Adventure Racing was a natural progression and Robert has now been competing as an adventure racer for 14 years now. He started his own company Kayak Lake Mead and that company has now grown into the Desert Winds Adventure Series which he runs with his partners Colleen Ast and Glenn Millar.

Colleen started her involvement in sports at a young age, participating in swimming and rowing for many years. At the same time that her rowing career was excelling, Colleen discovered a passion that would span an 18 year career, training marine mammals. While in Las Vegas, she discovered another passion, mountain biking. Along with her partners, Robert and Glenn, she was able to set big goals and participate in numerous races including 12 Hours of Bootleg, the Silverman half ironman distance triathlon and the TransAlps race, an Epic race across the Alps covering four countries.

Glenn grew up in northern California and graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science in Physiology. At an early age Glenn started playing baseball, and later added football to his sports resume in high school. Since leaving college he has remained active in a variety of sports, with a focus on running and mountain biking. He has been an active and accomplished adventure racer since 2000 with the team that he formed with close friends. Over the years they have won several sprint and 12 hour races and they have completed several 24 hour races. Glenn’s focus has always been on team achievement and, while winning is great, completing a race with friends is the ultimate reward.

In 2,000, after becoming hopelessly obsessed with climbing, Micah moved to Yosemite California where he spent three years as a member of the legendary Yosemite Search and Rescue Team. He has followed up his El Cap resume with all free ascents of the Regular Route on Half Dome (V 5.12+), and El Capitan's Freerider (VI 5.12+). During the summers of 2002 and 2003 Micah traveled to Greenland where he accomplished the first free ascent and the first one day ascent of Nalumasortoq. Much of his time has also been spent climbing in Indian Creek Utah. In 2005, he was featured in the film Return 2 Sender which won best climbing film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Most recently, he has focused on climbing on the giant walls and faces of the Himalaya and Karakorum ranges where he once again has become hopelessly obsessed. In 2005 Micah made the first one day (10 hour) ascent of the Eternal Flame on Nameless "Trango" Tower in Pakistan. In 2006 he returned to the Trango Valley and completed the second ascent of the 3,000 foot Cats Ear Spire with Eric DeCaria (elevation 17,585). Most recently, in August of 2007, Micah and his partner Jonny Copp made the first ascent, in alpine style, of Shafat Fortress (elevation 19,192) and unclimbed walled mountain in the seldom explored Zanskar Valley of India.

Micah is also featured in the recently released climbing movie The Sharp End.

Eric Horst has been climbing for 32 years, establishing hundreds of first ascents at his home crags in the eastern US. Eric is perhaps best known as the author of several popular Falcon books, including Training for Climbing, Learning to Climb Indoors, How to Climb 5.12, and Conditioning for Climbers, and he has coached hundreds of climbers through his training seminars and web site. Eric has written dozens of magazine articles over the past 20 years and he continues to maintain the Nicros online Training Center and records monthly training podcasts for Podclimber.com. Eric’s next book, Maximum Climbing, will be released in January 2010—visit his website www.TrainingForClimbing.com to learn more.

Eric has been an Access Fund member since the organization was founded in 1989, and he is also an active member of the New River Alliance of Climbers (NRAC). For the past three years, Eric has conducted training seminars and slides shows as part of the HERA Climb For Life program in the Washington DC area. Eric is a climbing Ambassador of La Sportiva, Nicros, and Sterling Rope. He lives with his wife and two sons in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Arno Ilgner distinguished himself as a pioneering rock climber in the 1970s and '80s, when the top climbs were bold and dangerous first ascents. These personal exploits are the foundation for Ilgner's unique physical and mental training program--The Warrior's Way. In 1995, after a thorough search of the literature and practice of mental training and the great warrior traditions, Ilgner formalized his methods, founded the Desiderata Institute, and began teaching his program full time. Since then, he has helped hundreds of student sharpen their awareness, focus attention, and understand their athletic (and life) challenges within a coherent, learning-based philosophy of intelligent risk-taking. Ilgner considers the joy and satisfaction in the effort – the "journey" – intimately linked to successful attainment of goals, the "destination". Alumni of his courses now include some of the nation's most prominent climbers.

Ilgner has run clinics in the north- and southeastern U.S, to California, Canada, Australia and the U.K. He has worked with young competition climbers and written national magazine articles based on his methods. He holds a BA in geology, spent several years operating his own geological consulting firm in the Wyoming oil fields, acted as Chief Financial Officer for an industrial tool distribution company, attended the Army Ranger School, and served a non-combat tour of duty in Korea. He currently resides with his family near Nashville, Tennessee.

Climbing since 1992, Harvard graduate Alli Rainey lasted for a single year working a real-world job before she chose to take a different route, becoming a rock climber and freelance writer. As a climber, Alli’s accomplishments range from redpoints of some 40 5.13’s up to 5.13+ (including many unrepeated first ascents and first female ascents) and onsights of some 200 5.12’s up to 5.12d, to bouldering V9, to winning and placing highly in numerous local, regional, and national bouldering competitions throughout her tenure as a climber. Alli’s climbing sponsors include Acopa, Clif Bar, Flashed, Native Eyewear, Petzl, prAna, Rocky Mountain Sunscreen, and Sterling Rope. As a writer, to date Alli has completed several full-length book projects, including Bouldering USA, as well as writing numerous articles for a variety of magazines and journals, including a monthly rock-climbing column she wrote for seven years for Rocky Mountain Sports and articles published Men's Fitness, Rock & Ice, Climbing, Alpinist, Gripped, American Alpine News, and Boulder Magazine, among many others.

Lately, Alli’s focus in the climbing community at large has turned to public service, with her efforts geared toward participating in as many community-oriented climbing events that she can fit into her traveling-climber/writer lifestyle. You’ll find Alli at community-oriented happenings such as the C5 Youth Foundation’s climbing program, HERA Climb for Life events, and more. Alli’s philosophy is simple: she believes that it’s these types of events — the unique opportunities to reach out to the climbing community and/or the community at large and to speak the language she knows best (the language of rock climbing) — that enable her to positively impact the world around her in the most effective way she can. In sharing her infectious passion for rock climbing, which has defined and shaped so much of her world, lifestyle, and core being, Alli has found a way to take her relationship with climbing onto the more meaningful level of benefiting others.

When she’s not climbing or writing, Alli enjoys spending her time training; exploring and playing in the woods and the desert with her friends and her dog, Jedi; cooking; reading; listening to and playing music; eating good food (good being a relative term, since anything tastes good if you’re hungry enough); running; and laughing.

Climbing since 1999, rock climber Kevin Wilkinson spent nearly a decade working as a backcountry ranger for Canada's B.C. Parks before he decided that even four months away from climbing every year was too much. Since 2007, then, Kevin has made climbing even more his reality, traveling to locales both far and near to pursue his passion. To date, his accomplishments include redpoints of nearly 20 5.14s, onsights of 30 5.13s, 125 first ascents in Japan, Canada, Spain, and the U.S., and equipping routes in Maple Canyon, UT; Last Chance Canyon, NM; Ten Sleep Canyon, WY; Lakit and Saint, BC; among others. Kevin's sponsors for rock climbing include La Sportiva, Petzl, and prAna. The writer of two self-published guidebooks (Lakit, BC and Saint, BC), Kevin has also bouldered V11/12 and recently tried his hand at indoor competition for the first time in 2007, with positive results.

When Kevin isn't climbing or training for climbing, he uses climbing as a vehicle to give back to the climbing community and the community at large. Kevin's community participation has included events such as Rocktoberfest, HERA Climb for Life, and the American Alpine Club's annual gathering, as well as helping to found and coordinate the inaugural climbing program for the C5 Youth Foundation in the summer of 2008. Sharing his passion for climbing with others through teaching and outreach programs provides Kevin with the opportunity to support the growth and development of this sport both within the community and beyond, while helping to promote the companies he believes in in the process.

Outside of climbing, Kevin enjoys searching for new rock, riding his motorbike, and of course, eating gummy bears.

Climbing since 1999, rock climber Kevin Wilkinson spent nearly a decade working as a backcountry ranger for Canada's B.C. Parks before he decided that even four months away from climbing every year was too much. Since 2007, then, Kevin has made climbing even more his reality, traveling to locales both far and near to pursue his passion. To date, his accomplishments include redpoints of nearly 20 5.14s, onsights of 30 5.13s, 125 first ascents in Japan, Canada, Spain, and the U.S., and equipping routes in Maple Canyon, UT; Last Chance Canyon, NM; Ten Sleep Canyon, WY; Lakit and Saint, BC; among others. Kevin's sponsors for rock climbing include La Sportiva, Petzl, and prAna. The writer of two self-published guidebooks (Lakit, BC and Saint, BC), Kevin has also bouldered V11/12 and recently tried his hand at indoor competition for the first time in 2007, with positive results.

When Kevin isn't climbing or training for climbing, he uses climbing as a vehicle to give back to the climbing community and the community at large. Kevin's community participation has included events such as Rocktoberfest, HERA Climb for Life, and the American Alpine Club's annual gathering, as well as helping to found and coordinate the inaugural climbing program for the C5 Youth Foundation in the summer of 2008. Sharing his passion for climbing with others through teaching and outreach programs provides Kevin with the opportunity to support the growth and development of this sport both within the community and beyond, while helping to promote the companies he believes in in the process.

Outside of climbing, Kevin enjoys searching for new rock, riding his motorbike, and of course, eating gummy bears.